A lot of skiers tell me their goal is to get their hip to the snow in a carved turn. This is a great goal and one I personally pursued for a long time until I achieved it. It took a long time and a lot of practice working on all aspects of my skiing. It was frustrating at times when I didn’t have the right snow conditions or the wide open ski runs to practice. But even when I did have the perfect snow conditions I still found it difficult to get into that really low position. Until I realised I was not focused on moving DOWN!

In this post id like to discuss one idea that may help you increase your edge angle as well as help you understand a little more about why and when to use a higher edge angled turn.

So here is the concept straight up. You are probably not focused on moving straight down enough. Instead many skiers keep tipping sideways as thats what it feels like when you first learn to edge. There is a point in carved turns where it feels more difficult or scary to achieve greater edge angles. To keep it simple in this post I will say roughly beyond about 45-50 degrees edge angle to the slope. Many skiers are stuck with this as their average max edge angle. And I think part of this has to do with a change in where they should focus on moving to keep progressively adding edge angle. 

Perhaps you've noticed in video of yourself "ripping" down the groomers and feeling like you're just inches from the ground you see it's actually much further away. You're barely tipped over at all. Why is this? Is it a matter of fear? Is it a lack of strength? What other factors could be at play? Well in my experience of  teaching thousands of skiers, both in person and online, I have found this concept of DOWN is one thing that is missing.